Pleonastically Extruded Adjectives

October 16, 2008

Adjectival phrases like small handful and young kid keep being uttered and written in contemporary American English, evidently without their producers being aware of the fact that they are pleonastic, i.e. the adjective is redundant: the meaning of the adjective is already contained in the semantic makeup of the noun it modifies. Handful, meaning ‘the amount that can fit in one’s hand’, is ‘small’ by definition. Likewise, kid, whether the referent is the young of a goat (its original sense) or of a human being, is just that: ‘young’.
Why “extruded?” Because the meaning of the adjective is already included in that of the noun it modifies but is linearized as a word that is an excrescence.
These constructions are further evidence––if one needed any––of the fact that American speech is teeming with pleonasms (redundancies, tautologies) of all sorts (fresh example: “Through the debate, he [Obama] was reassuring and self-composed.” David Brooks, “Thinking About Obama,” The New York Times, October 17, 2008, A27). Some have become so firmly ensconced in the language––like safe haven, prior experience, and advanceplanning––that we use them without giving them a second thought. But they are pleonastic nonetheless.
This sort of grammatical and lexical hypertrophy (a word used here advisedly, with allusion to its medical sense) is to be rooted out not just because of its stylistic demerits but because it is a manifestation of something ultimately much more important: it is a FAILURE OF THOUGHT. (More about this in future posts.)